“Frank, you broke my damn teacup.”
Shit, I thought, as I walked back into Oliver’s room to drink tea with him. I knew he was already in a bad mood, and I’m pretty sure I made it worse.
“Hey man, I’m sorry about that. You know it was an accident.”
“Just forget it. Whatever,” Oliver says to me in a pissed off mood. “I was gonna break it myself if you didn’t anyway.”
I just wanted to have a nice quiet tea session before the Super Bowl, because during that time I’ll probably go crazy and scarf down food. Oliver was angry at my fraternity brother Josh because of some silly argument that they had. You know the drill: Guy breaks up with girl, but is still attached to her like a dog and its master. Oliver was fed up with it because Josh basically wanted him to shut up and not ask her what the situation was.
“I’ll just want to stay away from them right now,” says Oliver. I was kind of indifferent about the situation. I was thinking more about the food that was downstairs and when my Broncos sweater would get here.
“Do what you have to do man. Just chill and drink some tea.”
Finally Anna Kathryn walks in. “Hey!” with her big beautiful smile.
“Here’s your sweater,” she says. I let AK usually wear the sweater to bed or whatever she does with it because she likes how comfy it is. When you’re in a relationship, you understand these things. At least she came to watch the game with me. Our original plan was also to invite some of her sorority sisters as well to tea and possibly the festivities going on. But because of one of them getting sick, it didn’t really happen.
After all the bullshitting we did and hot tea that usually scalds my mouth, I knew it was time to go downstairs. Of course, our house mother Bobbie never fails with the amount of snacks and hors d’oeuvres on the table in our library. Meatballs, wings, chips, sodas, some strange sourdough cheeseburger thing; name it. But there’s something that’s missing that I know someone is going to ask me to get. Then I hear it down the hall:
“Muzzyyyyyyyyy,” Evan shouts. “We need beer!”
“Well you fuckers are going to have to give me money because I’m not drinking any of it.” I’m not the only 21 year old in the house, but Dan is usually with his girlfriend somewhere, and Stan is either lazy or people don’t trust him because he has no American driver’s license. I don’t really care. Evan says to me the pledges are chipping in for it, so I go collect like the IRS.
We went from having one pledge to 12 this year because a fraternity’s name I won’t mention got suspended for three years due to circumstances that are too long to explain. Either way, these guys got stranded, and came to us. They’re also one of the reasons why our national fraternity reps bought us a 60 inch Sony television. As Oliver said to me once, we got rewarded for being a bunch of fuck ups.
I drove to Kroger and picked up three cases of Keystone and 60 solo cups. Technically we didn’t register this event as a party so we have to be sneaky college students in case security shows up (they didn’t). I don’t drink beer anymore because I’m allergic to it; I was convinced it was a gluten allergy at first, but my gluten intolerance level is absurdly low. I don’t know and I don’t really care. I’m not going to drink myself into a coma unless I don’t have class the next day.
Well the good thing is the pledges brought over girls. At least it wasn’t a sausage fest, since only my girlfriend and Dan’s were here. But I don’t know what it was, because all they did was sat on the floor and not interact with us. I remember going to get food and they looked at me like I had two heads. This is my house. Don’t look at me like I don’t belong here.
Once everyone settles down with their pizza, beer, and buffet food, we watch the game. Already it starts off as a disaster and just keeps going downhill for the Broncos. Most of the guys in the room are Seahawks fans or are just rooting for them. There are maybe three Broncos fans here total, including me.
“My parents are going for the Seahawks because Russell Wilson went to NC State,” AK tells me. She’s from Winston-Salem, so I understand the home support. Too bad the Giants aren’t in it this year. They were pretty awful. Actually, all the New York teams were awful; the Yankees, the Giants, even the Knicks are playing like they had Isiah Thomas as the coach.
“This is such bullshit,” I say. I say this repeatedly throughout the night. I’ve been a Broncos fan since John Elway was on the team, and I’m a Peyton Manning fan, so of course I’m going Broncos. But of course since they’re losing, everyone is going to make fun of me since they are literally getting their asses handed to them. I almost thought Eli was playing out there, not Peyton. I wasn’t losing hope anytime soon, but they were playing like the cast of Little Giants out there. Meanwhile I’m on my third plate of food, and the brownies come out. Now it’s serious.
Aside from the actual game, I was looking forward to the Halftime show, and the commercials. Not sure which one I wanted more, but I really wanted to see the new Captain America trailer. Instead the first thing I get is Transformers 4. If I wasn’t so excited to see the Dinobots, I would’ve told Marky Mark to get lost.
Basically by the fifth Bud Light commercial (including a blonde-wigged Arnold Schwarzenegger and the legendary Warren Sapp), I was pretty done with this awful display of playing. I just want to see Bruno Mars and the Chili Peppers kill it. Bruno Mars starts off with a pretty decent drum solo before going into songs like Locked Out of Heaven, Treasure, and Runaway Baby. His eight-piece band had a lot of showmanship, reminiscent of some James Brown stuff, with dances moves and funky outfits. Then of course RHCP made an energized cameo, including a shirtless Anthony Kiedis and Flea. Hey, at least they weren’t wearing just socks.
Soon after the Halftime show, the ever-silent freshman girls mostly left the place, and the Broncos were still losing. Could this game get any worse? Probably if it weren’t for the one touchdown and successful two-point conversion the Broncos made. It was a sad day at the MetLife Stadium. Even so, I feel like my native New Yorkers were kind of just dwindling around, not really giving a shit because the Jets or the Giants aren’t exactly there (with the exception of baby Manning).
“This is sad man,” says Josh. “The Seahawks are just killing them.” Josh is from Seattle, so obviously he’s a Seahawks fan. But he’s right; after the terrible display of passing, and the “what-the-shit-was-that” interception thrown to Kam Chancellor, I was pretty much going to throw my Diet Coke at the TV. But that would be selfish, wouldn’t it?
And do you know what made it worse? I couldn’t hear a damn thing. We hooked up a small sound system to at least give the mastodon of a television some more balls with the sound, but I felt like I was watching the game from a laptop.
With close to 5 minutes left in the game, most of the freshman left, and it was just a few of us left here waiting for the game to end. Even I wanted this game to be over. It was like watching a Division III sports game. I’m not exactly a fan of college sports (namely football), because there are too many teams, and I don’t exactly have a good enough college team in my hometown (which is New York City). The closest thing we have is the Syracuse Orange.
The game ended, my girlfriend went home, and I had a lot of homework to do. At this point I was looking forward to watching Brooklyn 9-9 for a few minutes before I had to dive into my readings about film and auteur theory. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It’s pretty funny, and it’s relatable to me since I grew up with a family of cops. But that’s a story for another day.
Any trailers I missed or wanted to see again, I’d just google. After the atrocity I witnessed, I still had one lingering thing in my head. Right before AK left, she asked me where all the stuff from the losing team goes. You know, the shirts and hats and stuff. I explained that they go to third-world countries for those who don’t have clothes. She was kind of in disbelief; I told her it happens every year.
As I stood in the rain to contemplate the night before bed, I thought of everything that happened tonight; the food, the freshman, and Super Bowl 48. I realized that Super Bowl Sunday is one of those things you only get to do once a year, like Halloween or your birthday. You’ll never see football-shaped jello jigglers or a plethora of football jerseys in one room.
Maybe next year someone else will buy the beer.
